Saturday, June 22, 2013

Jim is in Philadelphia. He's there with his son Ryland on a trip that's a birthday gift -- Ryland, whose school year ended yesterday, is the one of all his four children who shares his parents' affinity for American history. The trip, which will cover the territory Jim took with his oldest son in in 2002, will cover familiar terrain like Valley Forge and Independence Hall, along with a newer venue or two like the National Constitution Center.

Reading on the trip will be Jill Lepore's latest book The Story of America, a collection of essays. Lepore is a rock star in the history business: besides holding a tenured appointment at Harvard, she's a staff writer at The New Yorker, where most of the pieces in this book appeared. She evinces the very rare gift of the serious scholar who can write very accessibly, endowing familiar topics (the Puritans, Benjamin Franklin, Noah Webster) with a sense of freshness in terms of detail while at the same time putting an interpretive spin on them. Many of these pieces have a historiographic dimension; Lepore doesn't simply write about these people, but rather other people writing about these people and what their efforts reveal in the process. Her talents are enviable. But one puts aside one's avarice in the face of work that's so engaging.

Best to all now that summer is officially, undeniably, truly underway.

About King's Survey

King's Survey is an imaginary high school history class taught by Abraham King, a.k.a. "Mr. K." Though the posts proceed in a loosely chronological fashion, you can drop in on the conversation any time. For more background on this series, see my other site, Conversing History. The opening chapter of "Kings Survey" is directly below.

“The Greatest Catholic Poet of Our Time . . . Is a Guy from the JerseyShore? Yup,” in The Best Catholic Writing 2007, edited by Jim Manney (Chicago: Loyola Press, 2007)

“I’s a Man Now: Gender and African-American Men,” in Divided Houses:Gender and the Civil War, edited by Nina Silber and Catherine Clinton (Oxford University Press, 1992).

THE COMPLETE MARIA CHRONICLES, 2009-2010

Most writing in the vast discourse about American education is analytic and/or prescriptive: It tells. Little of that writing is actually done by active classroom teachers. The Maria Chronicles, like the Felix Chronicles that preceded them (see directly below), takes a different approach: They show. These (very) short stories of moments in the life of the fictional Maria Bradstreet, who teaches U.S. history at Hudson High School, located somewhere in metropolitan New York, dramatize the issues, ironies, and realities of a life in schools. I hope you find them entertaining. And, just maybe, useful, whether you’re a teacher or not.–Jim Cullen